Coop Scoop: The I Don't Want to Go Home Edition

A country with a virus passport is a good country

September 20, 2021

Victoria BC, Canada

By Marc Cooper

I’ve been in Canada the past 6 days. I will spend another week here. And I do not and will not feel like going home when this trip is over.

Canada is not a paradise. And I am not one of those lefties who hates America. But there’s one thing about Canada today that makes it very different from home. And very very attractive.

There’s now a national mask mandate and more importantly most of Canada is now under a vaccine passport mandate. We got to British Columbia one day after the passport went into effect and it was already running smoothly with no visible bumps.

Every restaurant, every bar, every club, and even a lot of retail shops have the same protocol. To enter you must show either a vax card or a digital copy along with a picture I.D. It only takes a minute or less, the shopkeepers seem to be happy with the deal as are the citizens. No one is complaining or whining on the doorsteps, no one is yelling at those requesting the cards.

Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau on the Campaign Trail

Is it a pain in the ass? Not really. Not at all. I have not felt this safe, this comfortable, this great in the last 18 months. Wherever you go, especially to eat, you know you are surrounded by rational people who are at least doing what they need to do for their safety and yours.

Back home in Washington state, especially now during the Delta surge, going out is a bit like playing Russian Roulette. I have no idea if the person sitting next to me, breathing all over me, is vaccinated or if they are instead volcanic vectors of unchecked virus with scrambled eggs for brains. Not a good feeling, even fully vaxxed as I am.

Reading the US news from north of the border creates a rather sickening feeling. When you can see and feel the difference that a simple, obvious public health measure like passport mandates make, it seems unreal, actually surreal, to see the millions of ignorant jackasses and their despicable political leaders down south doing everything they can to scupper such measures.

When Canadians ask me to explain the mentality of such ghouls as Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis, I am at the point where I simply say, “They are Americans.” That answer is almost universally greeted with a knowing nod, another fact that is somewhat unsettling and vaguely embarrassing.

Not that there are not anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers here in Canada. Much like in the US, resistance to common sense measures is much stronger in rural areas than in cities. The prairie province of Alberta has become both a COVID and an anti-vax hotbed. The good news is that even the provincial authorities are collaborating with the mandates and snubbing the public protests.

There have been some very small protests here in Vancouver and Victoria. They usually draw a couple of dozen people at the most. It was a glorious sight yesterday when a half-dozen shouting and placard-carrying anti-vaxxers marched through an open air market and were roundly jeered and booed by those present. Wouldn’t you love to see that in whatever place you are reading this now?

There was a larger protest with maybe 35 protesters congregating in front of the picturesque Victoria Parliament Building and crowding the nearby sidewalk. Most people simply ignored them. I, on the other hand, waded in. Mostly to test my confirmation bias by seeing if these folks were as big of assholes as I imagined.

Well, I was NOT disappointed!

They were gigantic assholes! Straight outta the Qanon brain wash facility. Trying to persuade them or reason them through some other alternative was like trying to convince the Pope he is not Catholic. “Canada is under communist control…. Trudeau is a Maoist….they want to control us with the vaccines….the 700,000 Americans who died from COVID in the US really died from the vaccine… no I did not have to be vaccinated when I went school (not true)… I have my own immunity” and so on and so on. Not at all that different than you would hear from their cohort in the U.S.

Yes, also aggressive. Yes, also at the top of their lungs. Yes, with the same breathtaking twists in “logic” and discourse. Yes, just like being at any militia gathering in the U.S. but sans any guns.

And there is another crucial difference between the Canadian anti-health protesters and their American counterparts: this northern crew is much smaller in numbers and they have virtually no political representation inside the Canadian mainstream. There are no national authorities, no major party, no rogue governors obstructing public health.

At least, not until now. And much will be sees later today. Monday, when the national election returns come in.

Stick with me for a moment (I know the US media has mostly ignored the election campaign in this democracy directly to the north. Gabby Petito has gotten more air time and more ink over the last week than the 38 million Canadians going to the polls).

Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the snap vote two years ahead of schedule, hoping to turn his minority government into one with a majority. As one indicator of the public consciousness here in Canada, Trudeau made the election call just two days after imposing broad mandates and sensing support for those policies.

But the Delta wave packed more punch than anticipated and the virus has eroded some, I repeat some, of Trudeau’s popularity. Yet, almost amazing to these American eyes, the COVID mandates have not emerged as a serious campaign issue, despite the peaking of the pandemic.

The rival and opposition Conservative Party does not oppose the mandates in any serious way and, in fact, proposes increased testing, including for all border crosses. The man who would replace Trudeau, should the Conservatives eke out a win today, is businessman Erin O’Toole. Again, as a significant indicator of the political atmosphere here, O’Toole is running toward the center, not toward a Trumpist Right. O’Toole has been voicing his support for LGBTQ Canadians and underlining his pro-choice position.

As I write this, the Liberals and Conservatives are both polling around 30%, meaning that any new government coming after the election will depend on the support of smaller parties, like the lefty New Democratic Party, the Green Party, the Quebec Bloc and maybe, though not likely, the People’s Party of Canada (PPC).

in 2019, the extreme right and anti-immigrant PPC racked up a total and negligible popular vote of 1.5 percent and failing to win as much as one seat in parliament.

Since then, the PPC has taken up the mantle of the COVID deniers and vax resisters and has a acquired a public posture quite similar to any group of loudmouth Trumpies. And the PPC has gained some traction in doing so. Indeed, party leader Maxime Bernier has done his best to become the greatest Trump impersonator of all time and has branded PM Trudeau a “fascist psychopath.”

PPC followers have now intruded on the public scene by trailing Trudeau on the campaign trail, trying to disrupt his rallies and, on occasion, throwing pebbles and gravel at him.

Polls this past weekend give the PPC 6% of the vote on Monday. What’s got some Canadians freaked out is that in this multi-party democracy, there is a norm (not a law) that any party that gets 5% of the vote gets considered an official “federal” party and is then granted representation in national debates and other fora. There’s a chance, then, the PPC will become a more permanent fixture in Canadian politics. Or it might suffer the same fate as many smaller parties that fail to meet its poll numbers and fades into oblivion.

We’ll see later today how the voting shakes out. Allies of Trudeau are calling on voters sympathetic to the social democratic NDP to hold their objections and vote for a “progressive” Trudeau (much like centrist Dems tried to dissuade a vote for Bernie Sanders). Meanwhile, the Trump-like PPC, while still pretty small, could act as a spoiler and siphon off votes from the Conservatives, handing easy re-election to Trudeau, the guy they brand as a Fascist and a Communist on alternate days.

That would be one helluva of an irony. Or maybe not. Nobody said Trump followers or imitators have any real political sense.

Heading toward Banff this morn. And will be in touch in a few days. ++

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